The version of Captain America: Brave New World that arrived in theaters earlier this year seemingly had little in common with the one that was originally filmed. Something about it wasn't working, though, meaning The Leader's scenes were reshot and the superpowered Serpent Society was cut.
Rosa Salazar and WWE Superstar Seth Rollins were left on the cutting room floor, despite the former getting her own Happy Meal toy as Diamondback.
Thanks to artist Michael Blackbear Uwandi, we have a piece of concept art showing Sam Wilson/Captain America doing battle with the Serpent Society (that appears to be Falcon in the background, too). This had the potential to be an awesome action sequence, something Uwandi alluded to in his post.
"In early development, we envisioned what it would look like to see Cap fighting the Serpent Society," he explained. "So many cool ideas for them that didn't make it into the final film."
While something about the original version of Captain America: Brave New World clearly wasn't working, Marvel Studios might have made a huge mistake by not embracing the campiness of the comics. After all, Sam was always going to fight Red Hulk in the final act, so committing to that rather than trying to remould this movie into another Captain America: The Winter Soldier might have been a wiser approach.
Earlier this year, filmmaker Julius Onah said the movie's reshoots took Captain America: Brave New World from being "heightened" to "more grounded," citing the Serpent Society removal as an example of that.
"I think it gets a little deceptive in 'a whole new character was added,'" he said of Giancarlo Esposito's Sidewinder, "because Serpent Society was always a part of the story, so the story function that Serpent Society serves in the film has never changed...we were deviating probably a bit too much from the grounded tone that we wanted the movie to have with how we had created Serpent Society at first."
"You know, they are people dressed like snakes in comic books, and they have snake-adjacent powers and stuff that’s really, really heightened, and you wanted an actor who could really help us lean, or gesture towards the fantastic, but without losing that sense of grounding," Onah continued. "So it’s not like Serpent Society or the character changed. It was just, let’s really introduce a version of them that fits into the tone of the movie."
It's been rumoured that the Serpent Society was going to be outfitted with their powers by Ironheart's Ezekiel Stane, with Isaiah Bradley also part of the battle.
In Captain America: Brave New World, after meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford in his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, Sam Wilson finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.
The movie stars Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Xosha Roquemore, Carl Lumbly, with Giancarlo Esposito, Liv Tyler, Tim Blake Nelson, and Harrison Ford. The movie is directed by Julius Onah and produced by Kevin Feige and Nate Moore. Louis D’Esposito and Charles Newirth serve as executive producers.
Captain America: Brave New World is now streaming on Disney+.